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Affidavit reveals details in church school thefts

By JAMES A. KIMBLEUnion Leader Correspondent

BRENTWOOD — A former director of a church nursery school in Londonderry charged with embezzling about $18,000 resigned from her job soon after being told that another bookkeeper would be taking over the school’s finances, according to police.

An affidavit detailing the investigation into Lisa Wallace, 42, of Wakefield, Mass., was recently made public in Rockingham County Superior Court.

Wallace faces a single count of theft by unauthorized taking for allegedly taking funds from St. Mark the Evangelist Church from September 2008 to June 2012, indictments say.

She was indicted by a grand jury in October. No trial date has been set.

Wallace served as director to the church’s nursery school and had access to a church bank account designated for buying school supplies, police said.

But an internal investigation into the school’s finances revealed that no third party was comparing bank statements to books that Wallace was in charge of keeping at the school, Londonderry Police Detective Kristen Gore said in a sworn affidavit.

Wallace did not print out a monthly bank statement between June 2011 and June 2012, police said.

“There was no evidence found that showed that the bank balances shown in the online bank statements from the St. Mary’s Bank were compared or reviewed to the records/bookkeeping of the account kept at the nursery school by Lisa Wallace,” Gore said in the affidavit.

Wallace left her job last June 7 shortly after a reverend at the church decided that the parish bookkeeper would be taking over the accounting and oversight of the nursery school’s finances, Gore said in the affidavit.Wallace did not turn in the school-issued bank card on her last day of work and made eight withdrawals from an ATM in Wakefield, Mass., police said.

“The transactions were made within minutes or seconds of each other, at $300 per withdrawal, totaling $2,400,” Gore said in the affidavit. That same day, Wallace used the card to buy $555.86 in groceries at a Shaw’s Supermarket, police said.

A day after that purchase, church personnel notified the withdrawals and had their bank freeze Wallace’s school-issued debit card.

A review of bank records by police indicated that Wallace made roughly 80 debit card transactions totaling $15,571.06 between June 2011 and June 2012, according to police.

Wallace has remained free on $5,000 cash bail since her arrest. She is due back in court for a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday.